Watching Tom Hooper's Les Miserables is a unique experience in movie going. Never before has a film so swept you up in emotion while still demanding strict analysis of the many directorial decisions throughout.

This is a movie adaptation of a musical that it is possible to love and hate at the same time. Yet to hate it, to decry the constant stylised format, is to sell it short, wishing for simple escapism from what is at core a complex, dark and difficult Victor Hugo tragedy.

Hugh Jackman plays escaped convict Jean Valjean in Les Miserables.

The story will be well-known to many, and so Hooper has set out to deliver a more challenging version of the life of Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), an escaped convict in 19th century France, as he attempts to reform, serve God and help his fellow man. Valjean's life is intertwined with that of the destitute Fantine (Anne Hathaway) and her daughter, Cosette, and he is terrified of being discovered by the law, in the form of Russell Crowe's Javert.

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Like its central characters, Les Miserables the movie is conflicted. On one hand, the story is so jammed full of tunes there is barely a spoken word, seldom a pause for breath between songs. It is more operatic than the average Broadway musical. We yearn to be simply swept up in it, yet the waves of music are relentless and potentially overwhelming.

On the other hand, the movie is so relentlessly determined to be cinematic, from sweeping camera moves and solos directed straight down the lens to the use of on-set singing rather than pre-recorded studio versions, with the resulting focus on acting performance over rhythm and synchronisation.

Physical deprivation: Anne Hathaway as Fantine in Les Miserables.

The result is a constant awareness that this is cinema not story, epic emotion not easy escapism. It is hard to let this Les Miserables just flow over you. This was a gamble, and one that has more than a few missteps, but a rewarding one for those who are willing to engage with a film that never quite pretends to be real, nor a fluffy frolic, but chooses instead to be more not less than reality.

Les Miserables is exquisitely beautiful, sumptuous and full of the raw emotion of its stage predecessor, but not easy or effortless.

The performances of Jackman, Hathaway and particularly newcomer Samantha Barks as Eponine are spine-tingling, yet we can see the actors working. Crowe is frustrating as Javert, restricted to a one-dimensional villain for too long, but in one heartbreaking scene with Gavroche (the tremendous Daniel Huttlestone) shows glimpses of what might have been. Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter go close to stealing the show on multiple occasions as the Thenardiers, yet their clown role is at times disjointed from the main action, particularly when dealing with the disappointingly flaky Eddie Redmayne and Amanda Seyfried as Marius and Cosette.

Russell Crowe is frustrating as lawman Javert.

At heart Les Miserables is about the music, and it is delivered here in spades. Though the singing of Jackman and Crowe particularly can sound occasionally strained when sacrificed for acting, this is an ocean of operatic glory and individual glitches are swallowed in the grander picture.

Most surprisingly, this is a film that won't just leave you humming but will find you dwelling on its themes long after you leave the cinema. Les Miserables will force you to actively watch, to analyse as often as weep, and is ultimately well worth the effort.